(Uh-huh. It became more-or-less exclusively associated with homosexuality in the '70s. So “long before” would include the phrase “The Gay Ninties” meant “The Crappy Ninties”? And in The Flintstones, the line about “We’ll have a gay, old time!” refers to the fact that we’re in for an unpleasant time?)
(Uh-huh. Because people who feel they’re being persecuted always go out of their way to put themselves in a situation where they’ll be more persecuted. Tell me, Dr. Freud, how did you come up with that diagnosis?)
My guess is that TheRyan just randomly generates this sort of idiotic comment by rolling dice and comparing results to some obscure “Dungeons and Dragons” table (the “Idiotic Comments To Make After Eating Those Colorful Mushrooms”-table, for example) and then throwing the results out as fact. His last few have been astonshingly stupid, so I’m guessing he’s getting good rolls.
My other theory is that he gets a kickback from whoever gets royalties from the :rolleyes: smiley.
It’s not so much the idiocy of the statements which bother me, it’s the authoritative tone and the refusal to give cites (especially on the Porn one, he was asked a half-dozen times to back that one up) that are getting on my nerves.That and the fact that these random, idiotic statments tend to derail any ongoing discussion: they’re like a black hole of ignorance warping the discussion to suck in other posters.
Not that I’d wish to make a disapproving point* or anything.
Ahem.
pan
*I started a pit thread about this once, but it seems to have been swallowed in the Great Purge since a search reveals nothing. Shame, would have made a good link. Ah well.
Well, I have only read the rape pornography thread, so I’m not really qualified to comment yet, other than thinking that the “all pornography” comment was quite the blanket statement.
Just wanted to quickly say, though, that this
I go hiking all the time. Sometimes I even offer opinions on unrelated subjects phrased as facts due to my perspective as a backpacker - “Clothes need to be rolled instead of folded when packing a suitcase. You’ll save room and they still won’t wrinkle”. My friends tolerate this attitude because they know that I am a constant hiker. However, that does not mean that my backpacking is authoritative backpacking. No, I am simply a backpacker.
I think we should apply the same logic to The Ryan.
Not to rain on anyone’s rants or pile-ons or anything, but this
is technically true. Gay was a standard euphemism in Victorian England (and the U.S.?) for women of ill repute. To “turn gay” was to become a prostitute.
The “gay life” was a condescending reference (and “the gay 90s” was actually a two-edged statement that kept one eye on Paris, the Moulin Rouge, and the Can-Can).
As frequently happens in English, the two meanings co-existed for many years, although the more derogatory meaning actually fell out of common use, but there are examples of gay meaning licentious or morally loose throughout the 20th century. (It is speculated that the association of homosexuality=gay originated from gay=libidinous abandon, but I have not yet seen anything to establish that as fact.)
No comments on The Ryan, but I will agree with tomndebb on the use of ‘gay’.
It has meant licencious (sp?) for quite some time in the early part of the century. I didn’t know about the prostitute connotation, but referring to a man as ‘gay’ at the time meant that he was not serious, sober and hardworking. He was a ne’er-do-well, not necessarily a criminal, but not the sort of man you would want your daughter bringing home.
Another early “gay” usage, albeit veiled: In the screwball classic Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant is forced to borrow a women’s frilly bathrobe due to the unavailability of his own clothes. When he unexpectedly runs into a couple of people, and they ask him why he’s dressed like that, he leaps into the air, waggling his hands, and shouts, “I’ve gone gay!”